The Ongoing OccupationGaza After “Disengagement”by Toufic Haddad
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 2, 2005
First Published in Socialist Worker

The
lavish praise Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received for his Gaza
“disengagement” plan was enough for one Israeli journalist to call him
“the most warmly courted, popular new star” that “the world’s red carpets
are waiting for.”

The compliments may
have cleansed the name of a man associated with some of the worst war
crimes committed against the Arab and Palestinian people. But
disengagement itself, completed September 15 with the evacuation of the
last of 21 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, is likely only to open
up the potential for yet more Arab blood to be shed in the future.

This is because
“disengagement” had little to do with ending the occupation of Gaza -- or
“reinvigorating the peace process,” as was widely claimed by Israel, its
allies and much of the corporate media. Rather, it was precisely intended
to preclude both of these possibilities.

Is that an
exaggerated or unnecessarily pessimistic judgment? Just look at what
Sharon’s right-hand man, Dov Weisglass, had to say about the motivations
for disengagement, to the Israeli paper Ha’aretz in October 2004.
“The significance [of disengagement] is the freezing of the political
process,” Weisglass said. “And when you freeze that process you prevent
the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion
about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole
package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails,
has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all with a [U.S.]
presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.
What more could have been anticipated? What more could have been given to
the settlers?”

I recently returned
from the Gaza strip, where I witnessed the Israeli disengagement from
start to finish. The experience provided me a wide range of feelings and
insights. Perhaps the strongest impression I was left with is how Gaza
today represents a colonial laboratory for developing and implementing
cutting-edge methods of human control and oppression.

It used to be that
if an occupying power were unable to control an area due to local
resistance, the occupiers would be forced to retreat from these areas. But
that isn’t the case with respect to Gaza.

It’s true that the
Palestinian resistance that developed in the Gaza Strip during the past
five years of the Intifada (or uprising) destabilized Israel’s strategic
control. Particularly with the Palestinians’ development of medium-range
firepower, such as homemade mortars and primitive rockets, Israel’s
strategic control over the Gaza Strip was slipping.

Israel’s answer was
to devise new means to control Gaza more effectively from afar, using
disengagement to consolidate its grip.

To begin with, the
entire Gaza Strip remains entirely surrounded by an electronic fence and
watchtowers, ensuring that its 1.4 million Palestinians don’t leave the
congestion and squalor of their towns and refugee camps.

Then there’s the
ever-present buzz of unmanned drones that criss-cross the skies of Gaza.
In recent years, these drones have been increasingly fitted with U.S. made
“Predator” missiles -- which at the touch of a button pressed by someone
in a room miles away, ensure instant death to whomever they target.

There is the
enormous blimp that hovers above Gaza’s borders, not to mention the
well-armed Israeli naval vessels prowling off Gaza’s coast.

But these are only
the more tangible representations of Israeli control. There are also less
visible means, including a kilometer-long wall that Israel is preparing to
build into the sea, below sea-level along Gaza’s coast. Or the 650-meter
buffer zone Israel wants north of the strip.

Gaza’s population
registry still remains in Israel’s hands. The Palestinian Authority is
still not authorized to issue personal identity cards -- meaning,
essentially, that Israel still controls who legally exists there. Today,
there are an estimated 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza with no form of
identification -- who, hence, are unable to leave and re-enter their
homeland, whether for educational, medical or family reasons.

There’s the question
of border crossings in general, which Israel still demands direct control
over. This one feature of Israeli rule essentially gives it control over
all goods and people that enter or exit the strip, leaving the economic
future of Gaza in the hands of Israeli generals. Israel can cut off a
whole range of essential goods, from gasoline to medicine, from car parts
to generators, and Gaza will continue to be a place where Israeli
producers dump their goods on a captive market.

If these structural
constraints weren’t enough, there are a host of other political and social
concerns.

To begin with, Gaza
lacks sources of clean water. Not only has Israel tapped the flow of
underground water east of Gaza, resulting in the seepage of sea water into
Gaza’s coastal aquifer, but Israeli settlements also over-pumped the
existing aquifer, essentially leaving Gaza’s water a briny mixture that
causes high rates of kidney failure.

Israel has also left
Gaza economically destitute. Palestinian laborers have been prevented from
getting to work inside Israel -- resulting in 35 percent unemployment--and
many workplaces inside Gaza, such as garages and metal workshops, were
targeted during the incursions of the past year, with the excuse that they
were involved in weapons production.

In this respect,
it’s clear that Israel left an enormous physical mess behind in Gaza. Not
only did it demolish huge swaths of the territory’s arable lands, and the
homes of 25,000 people (particularly in southern Gaza), but it destroyed
the settlements themselves when the army withdrew. This has left upwards
of 25 percent of the Gaza Strip looking like an earthquake hit it -- with
the Palestinians forced to clean up the mess.

Last but not least,
Israel hasn’t ended its military assaults within Gaza itself, carrying out
no less than five assassinations against Palestinian resistance activists
since disengagement. At least 42 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli
fire throughout the Occupied Territories, and scores of others were left
wounded.

And none of this
even addresses Israeli policies in the West Bank -- the continued
construction of Israeli settlements, or the final sealing off of various
Palestinian towns through the construction of Israel’s apartheid wall.

These Machiavellian
forms of control, together with a disfigured wasteland of physical
destruction, extreme poverty and continued colonial oppression, have
ensured that nothing substantive has changed in Gaza.

What has changed,
however, is the international perception of this reality -- including
among many liberals and large sections of the left that believe “a
solution” for Gaza has been found. As a result, they accept U.S. and
Israeli arguments that Palestinians must now “establish law and order” and
“dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.”

Now is the time to
raise awareness that the 38-year occupation of Gaza has not ended, but has
merely entered a new stage -- a stage that is potentially far more
dangerous precisely because of the misperceptions surrounding
disengagement and Gaza’s status. Israel understands this all too well,
recently setting up artillery posts on the periphery of Gaza and openly
threatening -- in leaflets dropped by airplane on Gazan communities -- to
shell civilian areas.

It is our
responsibility to make sure everyone knows the reality of Gaza--before
Israel is permitted to make good on these threats.

Toufic Haddad,
co-editor of a forthcoming book on the Palestinian Intifada, recently
returned from the Occupied Territories. This article first appeared in
Socialist Worker (www.socialistworker.org).
Thanks to Alan Maass.